


The Mask of Truth

by HP_Lovecats



Series: The Shadow Tribe [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3502172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/HP_Lovecats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot. How Hyrule's Happy Mask Salesman got his hands on one notably non-mundane mask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mask of Truth

The Mask of Truth had served Kafei well, and so had the Gossip Stones. He'd served them all well, too, hence that nobody from outside the Hyrulian Royal Family or Kakariko Village knew that there was any connection between the mask and the stones. It was not that the knowledge was forbidden; it came to mind when anyone from the village spotted one of the stones. Sometimes they told it benign secrets on purpose and tried to coax it out mask-free; the stones took the former and didn't respond to the latter.

Still, it was undeniably for the better that those unaffiliated with the Royal Family didn't know. If they did, then the stones would never hear a secret again. The Dark Interlopers had had Sheikah of Kakariko among them, hence that Kafei had heard nothing of them before the war had started stirring.

The Mask of Truth was quintessentially Kakarikan; its design said as much, between the shape and the great red eye. It shared that with the stones, cultural influence. Consequently, they all looked like sorcerer's tools—the Gossip Stones looked like standing stones, and the Mask of Truth like something for ceremonial use.

And with the new ban, it couldn't stay in the village.

Kafei had come back to Castle Town multiple times since the Interlopers' banishment after barely being able to get inside before then. He'd sworn to himself that he'd known who in the village who had and hadn't had anything to do with the Interlopers, but the guards hadn't, nor did they find it mattered who claimed to be a loyal direct servant of King Hyrule, unsurprisingly. He'd searched the village through tunnels and crawl-spaces and even obscure ledges courtesy of Cuccoo-flights

And Kafei was now apologetically looked at as a welcome individual in Castle Town—one of the many Sheikah who'd stayed, with the Sheikah eye openly displayed on the tunic under his purple coat, shedding one newly-added scarlet tear of regret.

Everyone who wore the altered eye meant it. There were few who wore the altered eye; there was a pitiful amount left to, and those who were left weren't the only ones who would have. Sharp the Elder and Flat the Younger would have if they had lived to the war; Kafei told himself, maybe optimistically, that if anyone wouldn't have been touched,  _they_  wouldn't have. Even most of the shadow militia who'd been slaughtered by the guard in the village's defense would have, more prominently than anyone for having unknowingly fought to prevent traitors.

Kafei's regret wasn't even in that he hadn't found any evidence that the Dark Interlopers had existed sooner. He never would have thought to look. They'd  _known_  that nobody would have thought to look for them, or that they'd turn their magic against the Sacred Realm.

The Sheikah had betrayed not only the Hyrulian Royal Family but their Goddess-given right. That was what the altered eye was to strictly represent, that universal regret.

The Interlopers had been Sheikah. Wherever they were now, they weren't.

The Gossip Stones and the Mask of Truth never failed, and so Kafei knew that wherever his use of them was concerned, none of this was his fault—not his fault that the fighting had happened, and not even his fault that the Queen was still lost. The stones didn't know what the stones didn't know. Kafei hadn't failed in any of his immediate duties, as both he and King Hyrule knew. He was a good page, a good man, and a good bearer of the Mask of Truth. However, the Mask of Truth was magic, and so he was not to bear it anymore.

It was also still Kakarikan. If it was given to be placed in the castle, it'd be placed coldly. It had served as well as Kafei had for much, much longer. It deserved better.

Kafei had it with him, hidden in plain sight—in a sleeve in his coat's interior—like the Interlopers had been, and he knew it didn't make him a traitor. He was obeying the King, and he was simultaneously doing what he hoped the Mask would've approved of, too; he wouldn't know, since the Stones talked to the Mask, and even if it worked both ways, Kafei wasn't a stone.

He went into the marketplace, nodding to sad looks and returned them equally-sadly, and wandered, his narrow purple brow tense over skimming and scanning eyes. He was a servant of the King from Kakariko. He stayed outside to perform errands if he wasn't inside the castle. Walking into a residence would be strange.

Without invitation.

Kafei didn't see anything—anything—before he heard a man's voice, floaty-high, call "Begging your paaaardon, sir!"

He started. It was close enough from sound that he should've seen whose it was before he'd turned his head away; for one split second he was scared, paranoid, and knew better the next.

His eyes pinned straight on the thin man with the auburn hair and the even, simpering smile pushing his eyes to squint.

And then he pretended not to see him while he checked the crowds for suspicion. It wasn't there. And then he let himself "see" the man.

"Me?" he said, projecting.

The skinny little man bobbed a bow with his hands fidgeting over his stomach. "Yes, you!" he said. The hands let go of each other. One lifted to wave Kafei over, long, light waving-branch motions. "Would you mind stepping a little closer?"

Kafei didn't bother to say anything else; all he'd been waiting for was a cue. The man, meanwhile, had already turned around and started to walk. Kafei followed, barely blinking out of a latent worry that the man might disappear in tiny gaps just the way he'd appeared, side-dodging immediately behind and around people as they made for a street near the opposite corner of the market.

Kafei thinned his lips, just barely licked them, tossed a look to another of the corners and a little square building sitting there.

This would be an innocent question. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"To my house!" said the man. He turned to look back at Kafei, half a simper showing from behind his shoulder. "It's better that we chat inside. I'm sure that you'll agree."

The first time they'd spoken, it had also been inside. Pointing that out would look stranger to anyone else around than it was to him; rather, it'd sound stranger and make  _this_  look strange. Kafei took it.

The man stopped at the door second from the end of the street. He slowly bent, grinning on, and released the lock. He turned his face up—his brow didn't move, his eyes didn't un-squint, but Kafei assumed that the chuckle in the man's throat was meant for him, and was meant to be inviting.

Kafei awaited a cue again. The man took a step forward, still facing Kafei, and stepped through the threshold, face still trained on Kafei for every step in, to the point that he was inside and out of sight.

The door stayed open.

Kafei followed.

The man hadn't gone that far in without him; he'd posed just inside with his arms held toward the interior, another and clearer sort of welcome, and the normalcy of the house they stood in made Kafei uneasy. He doubted that this was the man's real house, or at least that it hadn't been set up for talking business—cold business, in comparison to the interior of that first square little building, his "shop" to be, the place where he kept his collection. The man went by the informal title of the Happy Mask Collector; the collection room had been both happy-looking and with hanging masks.

If that was where he kept them, it might excuse the apparent complete lack of masks in this house, but not the drabness.

There was nothing in this front room at all but wooden floors, wood-paneled walls, and one wooden table with two wooden chairs—and on the table, the one remotely ceremonious-looking thing anywhere "out", apart from the two men and their very purple garb: a pale flower-colored tea set painted with gold.

Kafei did not stare at it too long; he made himself stop, to look back at the man, who bobbed his arms, still outstretched to the room's interior. "Please, sit."

Kafei shook his head, holding up a hand to excuse himself. "Oh, no, sir, this is your house—please." In a very small part, attempt to confirm that that was just what this was—the Happy Mask Collector's alarmingly drab, maskless house.

"I  _insist_ ," said the Happy Mask Collector, with a crispness to the sibilance that made Kafei shudder, face stuck as stony as the Mask Collector's was  _smiley._  "Please, have a seat."

The page complied like there was a spear against his back—briskly but with his brow very slightly knit, chin up, eyelids lowered and mouth faintly turned downward at the corners against an unpleasant question. The man sat in the chair opposite Kafei, elbows up on the table.

"And go on ahead and pour yourself some tea. It  _should_  still be warm…"

Kafei complied with that, too, and the man was right, from the looks of the steam. He didn't go for the cup; he put the pot down and put his hands straight in his lap. He watched himself doing so, and when he looked up, the Mask Collector's cup, too, was steaming.

His face and the angle of his head hadn't moved since he took his seat. Kafei glanced aside, to shake off another chill.

"It includes a little bomb flower, or so the seller told me; it holds heat very well."

Kafei said nothing, for a beat, and then "ah".

"I'm not badly-connected. You wouldn't tell from looking at this room, I'd guess, but." The Mask Collector folded his hands and leaned forward. His smile looked even huger. "That's why I thought it would be better that we speak here this time, Kafei."

"I thought that you had your reasons for leading me to your house."

"Yes, but you seemed a mite uneasy, and why wouldn't you be, led into a bare acquaintance's home unexpectedly?" The Happy Mask Collector giggled, and lifted his teacup to his mouth. The smile went entirely invisible as he drank, and pulled back as soon as the cup was lowered from his face. "Thanks, nonetheless. You're playing along with me like a sport."

Kafei shifted his weight, light to one side, light to the other. "By any chance, is your, erm…" He racked his mind for a decent term; the Mask Collector himself had used "kindred spirit". "Is your fellow mask enthusiast going to be involved?"

The Mask Collector made a lifted "hm?" sound. A moment of total stillness. "Why would he be?"

"I don't personally know." The page shook his head. "You've told me that he has an interest in magical masks. I assume it would be the kind of thing that would interest him."

"To see? Maybe." A shrug, a tilt back of his head to make his nose more prominent, his smile narrower, and his face altogether rodentlike. "But I wouldn't invite him over unless I wanted to sell it to him. That would be teasing of me." Another giggle: a single _heh_. "Also, he isn't an easy gentleman to get ahold of—always traveling."

Kafei nodded. The last time they'd talked, the Mask Collector had implied as much; apparently, he'd met or rather had pointed at him a wanderer who'd come into Castle Town one day, with a large pack on his back—the wanderer had been asked if, perhaps, the Castle Town Happy Mask Collector might have been a long lost brother of his. The wanderer had had "many wonderful masks" in that bag; the Collector had haggled to purchase a few (he hadn't shown Kafei which ones) and they'd talked stock, quite enthusiastically.

The Happy Mask Collector was not, to Kafei's knowledge, anyone who anyone else would resemble but a doppelganger. It figured, however; there's a draw to the eccentric, and the Happy Mask Collector and, from the way it appeared, the sorts of events and run-ins he attracted and lent to were odd.

Hence that Kafei trusted him with the mask. "I have it here," he said, reaching around to pull it from his cloak. The Happy Mask Collector "hmm"ed again. "As I promised. In retrospect, I'm glad that I'm not bringing it out in the middle of your collection."

He laid the mask on the table—face up, its chin pointing directly at the Collector, who leaned himself up over it on his hands to look, still squinting, into its single wide red eye. The Collector looked up from it for a moment, letting his head tip as inevitably as if it was a little book tipping at the end of a shelf. "And why would that be? To hear it from you."

"It's an artifact. It's also useful. I would think anyone who'd look for where it's staying would realize someone might have tried to hide it among masks, if they knew it was somewhere to be found but failed to find where in the castle or Kakariko Village."

"Or they'd think looking for it in a mask collection was far too obvious, and look for it in the mask enthusiast's house instead." For once, his face changed—his brow tightened to a highly-pointed roof.  _Oh, well!_  "But all the same, I'm grateful that you've come this far in discussing leaving it with me."

Kafei felt immediately like a fool.

"But, again!" said the Mask Collector. "I'm grateful, and I promise you no harm will come to the mask. It's safe to say letting it fall into disrespecting hands would be harm, by your standards. Even if they thought to search for it in my house, here, they'd never get in. I use a difficult lock."

He felt like a fool again, blinking a little wider. Had he flinched? "Thank you for the reassurance," he said.

"You're very welcome, sir. And the room where I keep special masks—particularly special masks, I should say—is even harder to get through than the front door. I can show you to it now, but… You haven't even started your tea!" The man held a hand out to the little flower-petal cup in front of Kafei's right arm.

"Ah—" said Kafei. He flicked it a glance and another straight back up to the Mask Collector. He hadn't moved a muscle. Back to the tea cup. He nodded. "I apologize, sir," he said, quick and husky, lifting it up and swallowing it in one gulp. A puff of steam blew against his face. His nose twitched.

The Mask Collector chuckled, gratified. Kafei felt this time like he was being  _made_  a fool. He took that, too, waiting for the Mask Collector to stand.

He did, pushing his chair in, one soft wooden sound, and moved to the wall. He pulled down four pieces of wooden paneling in one, and out retracted a wooden organ. He looked over his shoulder at Kafei.

Kafei put a hand over his mask and his eyes on the organ, cocking a brow and preparing to listen.

Without pulling over a chair to use as a stool, the Happy Mask Collector held his hands up and dropped them on the keys, and played. Kafei whipped the mask off the table and shuffled over the moment the notes started so that he could watch—he heard eight staccato notes like a series of muted metal whistles and then, as he came to the Mask Collector's side, it stopped.

Too slow.

There was a series of rolling clicks in the wall beside the organ, and two more wooden panels drew themselves open into a double door.

"See?" said the Happy Mask Collector, without turning around.

Kafei nodded, suspecting he'd see nonetheless.

"Come along, then." The man didn't turn around until he'd lifted the four panels off the ground and put away the organ—another click as that part of the wall closed—to see if Kafei was following him through the doors; he was, Mask of Truth held in both hands, forward-facing. On a pause, both Kafei and the mask stood symmetrical. The man waved him in.

It wasn't any darker in the room in the wall. In fact, it was brighter—the dissonance gave Kafei a chill as it was what he had expected the man's house to look like to begin with. There was a deep purple carpet on the floor; there were cabinets one shade of red richer than the flooring and colored drapes and gold tassels flanking frames and glass boxes of, what he had most naturally expected, masks.

The Happy Mask Collector guided him along one wall of the room, grinning on and on—to allow him to look at each one, gripping the one he'd brought in all the more firmly between his fingers. Magic had a feel when it was worn, certainly, but did it have a look?

They  _looked_  like special masks. Some of them looked old; some of them looked bright. They were all too perfect, or imperfect, with flaking or shining paints or color deep through the material. In faces, eyes shone back and put a glare on the inside of the glass.

"Which of these did you buy from the mask seller?" Kafei asked. He let himself glance aside from the cases for a moment; the Happy Mask Collector had turned his head to meet the address ever-so-slightly. "If you don't mind my asking out of curiosity."

"Most of them!" The Collector bobbed a big nod, turning back away from Kafei. "Most of the ones you've seen nothing like, that is—and even a few of the ones that you have." He pointed—without looking—at a frame as they approached it. Kafei gave it a look; it was a fox-faced mask, painted boldly and glossed. "The Keaton mask in my shop is a cast of this one, you see. My first cast. None of these, however, are unique. I would never have been able to afford them as bases for my future stock if they were! As I told you—my friend knows lands where more often than not, masks are supposed to be special."

They came to a corner. A series of black, boxy chests sat in individual boxy shelves on a vertical rack. The Happy Mask Collector slowed, tiny steps into nothing.

And then he turned again, like a grinning, glaring compass needle. He squeezed his chin. "That said, I haven't given much thought yet as to how I should keep a very important mask such as the Mask of Truth, but... I thought that 'out of sight', somewhere unassuming, would be a good way to start, until I think better of it. Not to mention appropriate. Here—have a look at these boxes, if you'd like!"

"Appropriate," Kafei agreed, crouching to size the mask up against the boxes.

All were the same size, twice that of the mask. The Happy Mask Collector snapped the golden latch up on the second one from the bottom when Kafei hovered the mask by it and lifted the lid. It was padded inside, generously, with dark red velvet. "The interior's the color of the Sheikah Eye," said the Mask Collector. "I thought you might like that. Its own eye won't be seeing much in this box, but it will feel at home in what it does see."

"Would you like me to place it inside the box now?"

The Happy Mask Collector shrugged. "I'll consider our informal contract signed once you do, and I don't think I have any more to say. If you do, of course, please, my good man. I'm content on my end, but I'm not in any hurry."

"So I'm sure," said Kafei, "once I've officially entrusted the mask to you, you will keep it."

"Yes, yes." The Collector's nodding resembled slow rocking. "I'm honored to be its host."

Good, except. The Mask of Truth was, itself, a good servant. It was made to be. It had been for longer than Kafei had "known" it. It needed to hear things.

He slid his eyes closed and thought, his brow furrowed.

Kakariko Village would have been the best place for the mask to stay. It was, traditionally, where it belonged; it wouldn't be forgotten there. It may even see proper employment again someday. There was no longer a gate in front of the village. Anyone who found it there wouldn't be pleased to know that it had been there, and putting it away to rest there could defeat itself.

"Kafei, my friend!" said the Mask Collector.

Kafei's eyes opened. He opened his mouth, closed it, puffed out his chest some with a breath in through his nose, and started again. "I don't want it to stay in a box forever," he said. "Whether I or anyone else comes looking for it or not. Should you meet anyone who might be able to—"

"—honor the mask's history and nature, yes, you wouldn't want it used for evil, not against Hyrule or the Royal Family." The Happy Mask Collector had resumed rocking his nods. "There may be few if any true Sheikah in the near future, but I respect the mask more than enough that I'd never entrust it to anyone who wouldn't use it as you have, Mr. Kafei."

"I trust you," said Kafei, and he meant it, in as far as that.

And that had to be enough. Still on his knees, he held the mask up level with his own face.

He looked it dead in that one eye and wondered how it heard, pretended that he was engaged in a wordless dialogue; reciprocated attempt to read a mind, turning up nothing but attempt to read. It did what it was meant to do. He dropped his head, nodding to himself.

It's been an honor, he thought, and then pulled the connection loose.

He shut his eyes once and laid the mask down in the box, face to the end that opened, looking again to straighten it and pulling his hands out simultaneously with the Happy Mask Collector closing the lid.

Then he stood up and bowed. "Thank you for your time, and for your promise of discretion," he said to the Collector.

The Collector bowed back, hands wringing and squeezing together again. "Thank you, Kafei, for  _your_  time and for your  _trust_. I've told you already, as a lover of masks, I am no less than honored to have the Mask of Truth in—as a guest."

Kafei considered asking if he was sworn to secrecy. He hadn't truly heard the song that unlocked the door of the back room, which closed behind them as they came back into the front room, and so the one secret worth sharing that he might've walked out with hadn't stuck to him.

He stopped in the front doorway instead. He asked the Happy Mask Collector if he would keep everything secret until the time came that the mask could be well-served again, and the Happy Mask Collector swore yes with another grinning succession of rocking nods.

That was where it needed to stop. They'd both compromised secrets, technically, but it was Kafei who had compromised useable ones, all in good faith. It would close, then, on good faith. He said thank-you, again. Bowing again, and this time, he faced entirely down and took his eyes off the doorway.

"No, no, Kafei—once more, thank you!" said the Happy Mask Collector. "I'm pleased with all this, and while you may not be, trust me, I'll make sure this is was as good a course of action to take as you hoped."

Just like he'd seen Kafei's discomfort in the house. He knew that this was a loss.

Kafei stood fully and found that, without a sound, the Happy Mask Collector had shut the door. In the street, it was empty and lit yellow by turning late-afternoon sun.

They hadn't been in there long, had they?

If they had, then Kafei had lost time that was, for now, disposable. There were Stones of Truth in the city. He didn't need to make a course past them, on a long way through the castle grounds or past the Temple of Time. He'd go through the market, and up to see the King.

He hadn't felt like a traitor, concealing the illegal mask in his cloak on the way to hiding it. Now that he'd hidden it, he did, and he wasn't sure to who.

It was a loss. But it was a necessary loss. It wasn't against anywhere his loyalties mattered; it was for the Mask of Truth. It was safe, and it was waiting. It was in the hands of a man who revered masks, on principle; it wouldn't be badly-used, and while it wasn't used, it was honored, for now, just differently, not worn.

The way up to the castle was too quiet, too wind-blown, and too short. Kafei walked vulnerably insubstantial with air on his face and in a cloak felt suddenly hollow, skimming and failing to disturb a layer of dust over too many spiderlike, crawling secrets.

* * * * *

The Happy Mask Collector hadn't been honest about everything. He'd sought to be honest where, as he took it, it was key to be. He'd give the page most of what he wanted. He'd give the Mask of Truth to someone who could keep it well one day, when he couldn't anymore, and for now, he wouldn't give it to anybody at all. He'd lock his house and lock his special collection. Why would he want an artifact of a mask stolen? Failure to keep a truly, truly special mask secure would be as good as a crime he'd never forgive himself for! No, no, he had no intention of making Kafei unhappy. He'd said—and said—that what Kafei had wanted was what he had wanted. He'd pray that the mask would stay in good hands with him.

However, there were two  _hims_.

He'd been lying when he'd said that he wouldn't have showed his wandering kindred spirit the mask without intent to sell it to him. He'd also been misleading when he'd implied that he couldn't contact him. The postman had tracked him down with an invitation to come to Castle Town just before the drawbridge closed.

The drawbridge would have been closed now for approximately an hour. Tea had been re-poured, still warm in the kettle. The Happy Mask Collector hadn't moved it since Kafei had come to box the mask. It was a company day.

In the light of one orange candle, the Happy Mask Collector unlatched the box.

Across the table, a copy of himself "hm"ed down his own throat, set his hands on the table and cocked his head as he peered in, grinning and grinning in anticipation down on it.

The Happy Mask Collector lifted the lid. The Mask of Truth sat, staring straight up at the double.

"Staring is the closest thing it can get to saying 'hello'," said the Happy Mask Collector, shrugging. He crossed his wrists behind his back to straighten it, and then gestured over the box. "Take a look. Does it remind you of anything you've seen, Me?"

The doubled hummed to himself once again, decided or deciding, definitely descending.  _Done_. He nodded.

"It's unique in a… certain sense of the word. I'm sure it's unique in Hyrule," he said. "There is one of these out there elsewhere in the lands I've been to. Also, as chance, or—distant relations would have it, called the Mask of Truth!"

"Oh?" The Happy Mask Collector peered in—mirrored peering. "It looks exactly the same?"

"Quite regrettably, I haven't seen it for myself. But from reading, yes. It looks exactly the same. Much the same way the stones out on Hyrule Field look like ones I've seen in distant fields. They say that the wearer of the Mask of Truth can hear secrets that those stones have picked up on in the act of being humble, waiting stones that cannot move and lack mouths to blab with." The wanderer picked his hands off the table, fingers laced. A facet of light caught across his smile, an orange flutter in and out. "Tip has it, too, that there is quite a lot to be learned about rare masks from those stones. As I've told you, masks are quite a part of culture, in this favorite travel destination of mine. People do speak of them, and so, it seems plausible."

"Well, my dear Me, I can't sell it to you," said the Happy Mask Collector.

"Of course not! I am the Happy Mask Salesman."

A round of tittering.

"We'll both be Happy Mask Salesmen within the next few years, my good man! I thought you supported me."

"Are you about to make me an offer, Myself? As the Happy Mask Collector?"

" _Ye-e-es_ ," said the Happy Mask Collector. He leaned forward onto his elbows. "I couldn't possibly sell it to you, but I could lend it to you—provided you promise to bring it back next time you're in Castle Town."

"Lovely of you," said the Happy Mask Salesman.

"Don't you stall out there on making it back, of course! I'm sure I can lend it to you again sometime later."

"How long would I want to go without a chance to chat with a true kindred spirit?" The last two words edged on a laugh. "I'll be by again before too long. With your precious mask, and any masks that I find with its assistance to show you."

"Lovely of  _you!_ "

"We are two lovely fellows," said the Happy Mask Salesman, catching his teacup.

"It  _would_  be sad for a special mask to go for years unused."

* * *

 

_Cross-posted to FF.net._


End file.
